Travel Guides

Navigation

Cu Chi Tunnels

The Cu Chi Tunnels system is an underground network of tunnels
dug in the 1940s by the Vietnamese as a place to hide during the
fight against the French. The network was later expanded and used
in the American War. The system consists of more than 150 miles
(250km) of tunnels and unlit offshoots, secret trap doors
connecting narrow routes to hidden shelters, local rivers and
tunnels to the Cambodian border. It was a sprawling city of
improvised hospitals, living quarters, kitchens and fresh water
wells, with some tunnels barely large enough to wriggle through.
The plan was to launch surprise assaults on the enemy, and then
disappear; so successful a hiding place were the tunnels that first
the French and then the Americans struggled against these sudden
attacks in which the assailants seemed to vanish into fresh air.
Today many of the tunnels have been enlarged to allow visitors the
dirty and claustrophobic experience of crawling through a portion
of the underground network, past secret trapdoors and booby traps
laid against invasion. Unfortunately their popularity with visitors
has turned the area into a vicious tourist trap, with hard-sell
vendors a constant hassle among the touring throngs.

Address: 19 miles (30km) northwest of Ho Chi Minh City at Tay Ninh

Telephone: (08) 794 8820

Transport: The tunnels are best visited on a day tour, otherwise a bus from Ben Thanh bus station stops in Cu Chi where public transport services the site